That's common for how depression sneaks up on me, and though I do everything I know to avoid it, sometimes I fall in the pit, regardless----and my pride preceded me this time, too, as I enjoyed bragging to myself that I took no medications.
I have an aversion to thinking that I'm "covering up" anything, not facing an issue that seems important to my "personal growth"----regardless of how difficult it might be. And so, I stick out the pain longer, perhaps, than I should----for my own good health, especially since it's suicidal thoughts that are the trigger for me to ask for help with this life-long disease. As I've learned lately through my somewhat flighty "research" (watching THIS EMOTIONAL LIFE, a PBS special, and then following up with some Google questions about whether depression actually damages one's brain [yes], and also whether antidepressants can heal that damage [yes]), it seems that medication really isn't so bad on occasion. (I realize I sound ridiculously naive saying this, but I have an aversion to corporate pharmaceuticals and easy answers.) And so I swallow the pill and wait to feel better.
Today, I am grateful for breakfast fruit with homemade granola again, and the rain that's returned doesn't make me climb back in bed.
But the sun shone yesterday, when my husband and I attended a day-long meditation retreat at a nearby home on the beautiful Smith River, we participants holding to "noble silence," while the teacher spoke or we listened to Pema Chodron on CD, and I was reminded----again----of the truth that the unique is universal----oxymoronic, as many such truths are----that sharing my individual stories isn't at all "pointless" but worthy, too. . . because I rarely question others' sharing, only my own, it seems.
